Subject: FW: Robotics status


-----Original Message-----
From: B.I. [mailto:brooks@forethought.net]
Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2007 4:21 PM
To:  Coaches
Subject: Robotics status


Nice meeting and reconnecting with everyone yesterday.  I just wanted to 
summarize a couple things discussed thus far, so everyone's on the same page.

There will be a robotics table set up over the lunch hour on Thursday August 
30th, or whatever day Fred decides, proximate to the cafeteria so that younger 
and older lunch groups can observe last year's robot performance.  I'd like to 
have Andrew and Alex available to run their 2007 robot solution for those lunch 
periods.  I'll deliver the team's new table prior to that date, and I'll bring 
in the 2007 field kit and last year's robot with attachments that day.

It would be good to have another table nearby during the demos that could 
support a laptop running the NXT software, and seats for another couple team 
veterans to handle sign up sheets and answer questions.

John Cowell will set up 8 laptops with distinct robotics accounts and logins, 
external identification on the machines, and hopefully a corresponding tag on 
each case so that the machines can be quickly identified, brought to practice, 
and associated to a companion robot kit.  The routines that students write and 
save on the machines will parallel what's loaded to 1 of 6 robot computers (NXT 
"bricks"), and a mechanism to make a quick association between robot kit and 
host computer will save a lot of confusion in setting up practice labs.

I suggested to John that a week from the 30th (September 6th) would be a good 
target date to have the machines ready.  As it turns out, this season's 
challenge details will be announced September 5th, so the practice of 9/6 would 
be very appropriate to have the machines ready.  

It would also be good to hold the first practice on Tuesday 9/4 to build out the 
field models, assign NXT kits, open and organize the kits, go over kit handling 
and responsibilities, etc.  You want to end up at the end of the season with 6 
reasonably organized robot kits in useable condition for next year.  This is a 
good time for everyone to meet each other and get their hands on some legos.  

Have one set of color prints of the field model assembly instructions available 
for the students to build models from.  Also at this practice, identify each 
brick with a sharpie on the bottom so that it stays with it's kit.  Sharpie the 
associated kit boxes too.  The morning of the 9/6 practice, charge all the 
battery packs.

I picked up 2 25' cords and 6 8' cords to carry power for 2 clusters of 
workstations.  I also picked up 6 usb mice for the laptops.  The icon-based NXT 
software really needs a mouse.  These mice can stay with the kits along with the 
usb cords. 

Dave and Wendy seemed Ok with a Tues/Thurs practice schedule.  Fred was 
projecting about 18 students, evenly split between boys and girls.  This 
translates into 2 teams, each with 3 workstations consisting of a robot kit and 
laptop, and a load of 3 students per workstation.  Each squad of 3 students will 
work on solving the mission challenges -- building and programming a robot to do 
things.  They will compete with the other squads on their team and share what 
works with the other squads on their team.  Ultimately, the 3 squads will settle 
on 1 solution that they'll all buy into.  That means understanding how the 
machine is built and what the programs do to make it work.  Once they get a good 
robot structure they all like, maybe they'll run 3 copies of it while they fine 
tune the various mission routines.  A good rule of thumb is that a solid, 
predictable, solution is one that completes successfully 10 times in a row.     

I think it's quite important to have all students meet twice a week.  Once a 
week is not enough.

The research project portion of the competition is critical.  It takes a lot of 
time to perform the research, come up with a clever presentation format, visit 
with experts, perhaps do some community outreach within the school and without, 
build A/V presentations, powerpoints, web sites, get good and confident in 
presenting the work product, you name it.  The better teams do quite a bit with 
this part of the challenge.

The field kit and competition table will be shared during practices by both 
teams.  The squads can work out a protocol for sharing time on the table.  A lot 
of prototyping can be done at the workstation, off the table, by holding the 
robot in the air and doing test runs of whatever is being developed to see if 
basic functionality is there.  You only really need to run on the field to fine 
tune a process that already has basic functionality.      

Ok that should be enough for now.  

Call or write with any questions, please cc everyone.

Thanks all.  This will be cool.
Brooks